Denied Unknown

Key/Name Of Staff: Sergeant AdamYour Key/Name:: YarboroDate and Time of Incident(s): March 3Reason For Complaint::
The subject of this complaint is a round I played as a Vox scavenger. In this round, myself and a few others boarded the GUP while it was away from the Torch, looted everything we could, and dragged the prospector inside away with us. Afterwards, we were pursued by the Torch, and during my character perished after one of the PACMAN generators on the Vox ship exploded. (This was an honest mistake on my part, and is not relevant to the complaint) After this, I ghosted and left the round.
On the next day, Eonoc, the Vox species maintainer, DM'd me on discord and in a rather impatient tone explained to me that I had received a "strike" on account of my incident with the prospector. Eonoc did not argue the point with me, and did not specify which staff member brought this to light. I was never bwoinked about this incident, and as such was not able to explain myself, or have anyone explain to me why what I did was wrong.
The basis of this complaint is rule 33:⚹33. You must enforce the rules. You are not exempt from the rules.
Whoever the staff member in question is, they did not enforce the rules. Instead, they enforced something else entirely and unduly inconvenienced Eonoc in the process. There is no rule that Vox cannot kidnap prospectors. There is an unwritten rule that Vox may not interact with the Torch directly (I did not violate this rule, as I only interacted with the GUP). Moreover, Vox are provocateurs, meaning they are not "a full license-to-kill" antagonist rule. We did not have any intent to kill the prospector, and the prospector ended up surviving. This information is supplied in the text which appears whenever a player spawns as a provocateur.
In summary, no rules were broken and even if they were there was no staff member to explain this to me.Evidence of Complaint::
I am not quite sure what to put here. I can include Discord logs from Eonoc contacting me, but the real evidence is probably in the note that I got concerning the incident, which I, of course, cannot access.

The reason you weren't bwoinked is because you'd logged by the time the incident was reported.

Vox are, as you said, not antagonists.
Kidnapping people to hold them for ransom would be considered an antagonistic action.

We're allowed to bring up issues concerning someone playing a whitelisted species with the relevant maintainer.

There isn't any rule or regulation preventing us from telling maintainers when someone under their whitelist is acting fucky.

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a) We were not going to ransom the prospector. This would have required interaction with the Torch. Instead, we probably would have made them work for us or stranded them somewhere interesting with a reasonable chance of survival after getting bored.
b) Where does it say kidnapping a lone prospector is an antagonistic action? Please show me the rule, because I cannot find it. There is flavor-text indicating no killing is to be done, but there was no murder involved.
I would direct you to rule 20e: [Characters] must not seek to kill, maim, or act "crazy" under normal conditions.
We did not kill, maim, or act crazy. What rule did I break?
It is immensely unintuitive that Vox are allowed to board the Charon, take anything that isn't bolted down, and unload on exploration provided exploration shoots first, but are not allowed to kidnap anyone. And if we can't do these things, what are Vox even supposed to do? Explore derelicts and run away from humans?
Lastly, no part of the complaint concerns Eonoc contacting me. That detail was included for context.

Staff online at the time were unanimous in the ruling that Vox shouldn't be kidnapping Torch crew. That includes Eonoc.

The other two vox online both stated that the human was kidnapped to be ransomed or to be used as leverage against the Torch. In any case that point doesn't even matter. Kidnapping people is a blatantly antagonistic action, and trying to put a magnifying glass to the wording of the rules isn't going to help you.

I'm gonna go ahead and leave this up to the seniors. If they need anything further they're free to let me know.

Staff online at the time were unanimous in the ruling that Vox shouldn't be kidnapping Torch crew. That includes Eonoc.

The other two vox online both stated that the human was kidnapped to be ransomed or to be used as leverage against the Torch. In any case that point doesn't even matter. Kidnapping people is a blatantly antagonistic action, and trying to put a magnifying glass to the wording of the rules isn't going to help you.

I'm gonna go ahead and leave this up to the seniors. If they need anything further they're free to let me know.

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I don't want a magnifying glass. I want to see the rule. If you can't show me a rule, maybe I didn't break any rules...
Staff not liking what I did doesn't make it against the rules. Staff are mandated by rule 33 to enforce the rules, not the majority opinion of staff...

So. Here's the thing. We don't really go for exhaustive rules for everything. We have a set of rules, and expect our players to be good sports within them and, generally, not do things that go against the spirit of the game.

I'm gonna throw number 9 at this. ⚹09. Listen to staff members; they are not the enemy.

In this case, the administrator is doing what needs to be done to ensure fair play and play within scope of what is acceptable and expected. Something I feel you may not have a feel for.

Your actions were entirely not within scope of the Vox Scavenger role. Vox Scavengers are not raiders. You're a bunch of vox there for the express purpose of looting shit. Vox Scavengers do not enslave random people on looting missions for the purpose of "working" for you. Vox regard meat as barely sapient. Their equipment is of value, they are not.

Let's take some things from the Vox wiki page:

"To observers, vox are greedy, cowardly thieves with no manners, no culture, and a perceived cruel streak a mile wide, which is in reality, general apathy and distaste. They show up out of nowhere, ignoring all hails and negotiation in favour of scavenging, or raiding whatever soft targets are available, stealing things apparently at random before fleeing into the dark. When they are not in a position to steal, they lie and manipulate until they are either in a position of power, or are able to escape. A captured or imprisoned vox will fake cooperation with a sincerity that stands up to the most intense scrutiny, only to turn back on its promise and flee their captors the instant their situation changes.

Internally, the reason for these behaviors is tied to the fact that vox do not consider other life to be relevant. The so-called 'meat' is acknowledged only as far as it is useful, after which it is ignored, abandoned, discarded or eaten. Violence is not often actively pursued, and is generally used only when the meat is outnumbered, outgunned, or both. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort. After all, they have no cortical stacks - they clearly aren't actually people, even if they are pretty good at producing technology and raw resources for the vox to appropriate."

What you did does not match up with the vox approach to humanity, which is also summed up as: "General disdain and dislike. They are the most violent and expansionist sentient species in the vox sphere of influence, and generally the fastest to start firing. Their incessant jabbering and muttering is also offensive to vox ears. Often not worth the effort of direct confrontation due to their tendency to shoot on sight."

Kidnapping for no real rhyme or reason is an antagonistic action. Your provided reason is not a good reason for taking any sort of hostage for a vox scav. Boarding an occupied human ship to attack the crew and take their things = raiding. Not scavenging, they'res a pretty clear difference. What you did is grossly out of scope of character for vox scavs. It is not acceptable play. That is, really, all there is to it. Attempting to rules lawyer your way out of it is also not acceptable. Genuinely I believe you just don't have a feel for the style of play here and you went overboard in your actions.

This complaint is denied. The administrator was enforcing expectations of fair and good play in line with the expectations placed upon the Vox scavenger role, and its emphasis on being scavengers. We will not be adding rules for everything as frankly, that is unnecessary, results in bloat, and generally most players can be trusted to act in the capacity of their role without a vast amount of rules. In the future, please stick within the scope of the role you play and be more familiar with how Vox are meant to be roleplayed.